Nuannuan opened her watery eyes. Her long lashes were soaked with tears, clumping together against her eyelids.
She stared fixedly at Chuntao, her little brows furrowed. For several long seconds, she seemed to be trying to determine whether Chuntao really was the person she thought she was.
Then, in the next instant, her tiny nose quivered. Her little mouth turned downward, and even her chin began to tremble.
She had not yet started crying aloud, but the aggrieved, longing look on her face made Chuntao’s heart ache. Tears slipped from Chuntao’s eyes and fell onto Nuannuan’s little face.
“Nuannuan, you missed Mama, didn’t you?” She raised a hand and wiped away the tears on the child’s cheeks.
Nuannuan lifted her little arms and burrowed softly into Chuntao’s embrace, letting out a tiny whimper. She clung to her like a ball of cotton.
Chuntao held back her own tears and gently patted the child’s back.
“Sit down, quick.”
Aunt Zhou carried over a chair and placed it behind Chuntao. Then she poured a bowl of hot water and added a spoonful of brown sugar.
“Let Nuannuan drink some warm water and sweat a little. She’ll feel better.”
Chuntao held the child while Aunt Zhou fed her water by the spoonful. They had barely gotten down two mouthfuls when Zhou Zhijun came hurrying over.
When Zhou Xiaobao had gone to fetch Chuntao, Zhou Zhijun had been by the riverbank, securing the little boat.
He had not heard what Xiaobao said, but when he saw Chuntao running toward the village, his heart sank, and he immediately followed.
“What happened?” he asked, squatting down beside Chuntao, his brows drawn tightly together.
The little girl’s cheeks were flushed, and her lips were red and dry. One look was enough for him to guess.
“She has a fever?”
“Yes. She just finished taking her medicine,” Wang Haiying answered. “She’s been very good these past few days. Whenever she was hungry, I’d heat up some rice cereal for her, and I’d feed her a few bites of rice at mealtimes.
“Sometimes she’d look for her mother, but she’d calm down after we coaxed her. This afternoon, she went out to play with Xiaobao for a while. When she came back, she fell asleep.
“When she woke up, she cried nonstop. Her face felt terribly hot, so I hurriedly carried her to Zhao Qingjiang. Her temperature was thirty-eight degrees. He gave her a shot to bring down the fever and prescribed a few packets of medicine.
“She still wouldn’t stop crying after taking it. I couldn’t soothe her, so I had Xiaobao go call Chuntao.”
Aunt Zhou sighed, her face full of guilt.
“It’s all my fault. I went to the fields this afternoon to cut a basket of grass and left Xiaobao to watch her. How did I let her catch a chill?”
Zhou Zhijun touched Nuannuan’s forehead with the back of his hand.
“She’s not too hot anymore. She just needs to sweat a little, and she’ll be fine. Keep her out of the wind.”
He looked at Chuntao, his voice calm and steady.
“Nuannuan can’t go without you. We’ll talk about the rest later.”
Chuntao tightened her arms around Nuannuan and gave a soft hum of acknowledgment.
She moved back home, and naturally, the weaning failed.
It was as though Nuannuan feared her mother might disappear again. Whenever she nursed, she clutched the front of Chuntao’s clothes with both hands.
Even after falling asleep at night, she kept pinching Chuntao’s earlobe.
Whenever Chuntao tried to move her hand away, the child would wake up, whimper, and burrow back into her arms.
“Mama… Mama…”
Her babyish voice was still unclear, but hearing it made Chuntao’s heart melt.
She held Nuannuan close and gently patted her back.
“Nuannuan, don’t be scared. Mama’s here.”
At her soft coaxing, Nuannuan finally quieted down, but she never loosened her grip on Chuntao’s earlobe.
Jianshe drank rice cereal most of the time, so weaning him was not difficult.
After Chuntao returned, he no longer fussed to nurse. He only became anxious whenever he saw Nuannuan feeding.
Aunt Zhou quickly heated up some rice cereal for him. Once he had eaten his fill, he went off to play by himself.
A child that age never seemed to run out of energy. In the blink of an eye, he had rummaged through every drawer and cabinet in the room, leaving everything in a complete mess.
“He’s at that mischievous age,” Aunt Zhou said with a laugh as she tidied up. “As long as he doesn’t make too much trouble, that’s good enough. He was exactly the same when his father was little.”
After Nuannuan’s fever went down, she got off the bed after eating and played with her little brother.
The two children chattered away in their own babyish language as they played.
Nuannuan spoke clearly. Besides calling people by name, she could already string together a few words.
Jianshe had started speaking later. He could call all the members of the family, but he only managed one syllable at a time.
The two children were happily playing with the cloth dolls Chuntao had made, leaning over the table, when Nuannuan suddenly burst into tears.
“Nuannuan, what’s wrong?” Chuntao hurried over and picked her up, trying to soothe her.
Nothing worked. Nuannuan simply kept crying with her eyes squeezed shut. Before long, her little face turned bright red from the effort.
Chuntao touched her forehead with the back of her hand. It was burning hot.
“She has a fever again!”
Chuntao quickly gave her the last packet of medicine. Nuannuan slept for a while, and the fever really did go down.
But by the following afternoon, she developed another high fever and cried and fussed without stopping.
For three days in a row, she came down with a fever and began crying at exactly the same time each afternoon.
Aunt Zhou’s heart gave a jolt.
“Oh no. Nuannuan must have been frightened.”
“Frightened?” In the countryside, it was extremely common for children to develop fevers after being frightened.
Chuntao remembered something from her own childhood. During the New Year, she had been gathering firecrackers when she ran around the corner of a wall and saw a dark shadow.
That night, she developed a fever. Injections and medicine did nothing. Every day, she retched dryly and babbled incoherently, and she nearly died.
Her grandmother had carried her to an old woman in a neighboring village, who had called her soul back for several days in a row. Only then did the fever gradually subside.
“Ma, why don’t we take Nuannuan to have her soul called back too?”
Aunt Zhou had been thinking the same thing. She nodded.
“I’ll go ask your sister-in-law first and see if she knows who frightened Nuannuan.”
When she reached Wang Haiying’s home and asked, she immediately understood what had happened, but she did not tell Chuntao.
That very day, she accompanied Chuntao and took Nuannuan to Granny Zhang to have her soul called back.
Nuannuan continued taking her medicine, while Granny Zhang performed the soul-calling ritual. After that, the child’s fever disappeared completely.
No one knew whether the ritual had worked or whether it had simply been the medicine.
Either way, the child was well again, and the whole family could finally breathe easy.
But in Aunt Zhou’s mind, the matter was far from over.
That day, Zhou Xiaobao had said that he had been pulling Nuannuan along while playing with a group of children at the entrance to the village. After a while, he had run behind a house to relieve himself. When he came back, Nuannuan was crying, and nothing he did could calm her.
Not long after they returned home, she fell asleep. When she woke up, she had begun running a fever.
There had been seven or eight children present that day. Aunt Zhou had wanted to question them one by one, but she had been too busy treating Nuannuan to find the time.
Now that Nuannuan was well, she was determined to get to the bottom of it. Had someone really frightened the child that day? Had it been intentional or accidental?
If it had been accidental, then there was nothing much to say. But if someone had done it deliberately, the matter could not simply be dismissed. Otherwise, they might try something even worse in the future.
She did not go from house to house asking questions. Instead, whenever she saw children in the village or out in the fields, she casually asked them about it.
One after another, the children shook their heads. They said they had not frightened Nuannuan and that she was so adorable, they would never scare her.
Just then, Er Nizi passed by carrying a basket of grass. Hearing part of the conversation, she immediately came over.
“I know who did it. It was Zhou Xiaomei!”
“You saw it? How did she frighten her?”
“I saw her make a scary face at Nuannuan. It frightened Nuannuan into crying, and then she ran away!”
Aunt Zhou’s face turned cold at once.
She knew exactly what that mother and daughter were like. Unless she caught them red-handed, they would never admit to anything.
She did not immediately storm over to Zhou Zhimin’s house to demand an explanation.
Instead, she turned and walked home. Whenever she saw someone, she would sigh and say, “Nuannuan was frightened so badly that she ran a fever for three whole days. She’s only a little over a year old—how could a child her age withstand that?”
As her gaze swept over the courtyard of Zhou Zhimin’s home, she slowly added, “Making a scary face to frighten a little child—and getting caught by someone while doing it. Her reputation is ruined now. Who would dare associate with her in the future?”
Zhou Xiaomei had heard everything from inside the courtyard. Her face flushed crimson, and she hurried into the house to hide.
“If I catch her doing it, I’ll teach her a proper lesson!” Aunt Zhou added at the end, her voice as cold as ice.
Meanwhile, Er Nizi returned home and told her mother all about how Zhou Xiaomei had made an old hag’s face to frighten Nuannuan.
Before long, the story spread throughout the village.
When it reached Huang Meili’s ears, she was so furious that she stood in the courtyard, cursing and demanding to know who was spreading rumors and slandering her daughter.
Zhou Zhimin knew exactly what was going on. He knew very well what both of his daughters were like.
“What are you shouting about? Get back inside!”
“I’m not going back in! I’m going to curse those gossipmongers until they drop dead!”
“Let her curse.”
The voice was not loud, but it was cold and hard, like a chunk of ice crashing into their ears.
Huang Meili froze instantly. The filthy words had already reached her throat, but she forced them back down.
